Every state in the United States will have some minor party or independent candidates on the ballot for some federal or state office this year (other than president), except Alabama. Also it is too early to tell about North Dakota, since independent candidate petitions aren’t due until September.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a registered independent, will be a speaker at the Minnesota Independence Party’s state fund-raiser on July 25. See this article. Perhaps this is a sign that Jesse Ventura has decided to run for U.S. Senate in the Independence Party’s primary this year. Declarations of candidacy are due July 15. Thanks to IndependentPoliticalReport for the link.
A hearty thank you to Tim Thornburn of San Francisco, for giving Ballot Access News a new computer, and for installing it. The old one, seven years old, was giving hints that it wasn’t long for the world. Also thanks to David C. Johnson of Milpitas, California, and Jerry Kunz of San Francisco, for replacing my printer and installing the new printer. Also thanks to Eric Garris, for being the webmaster and for posting the print version of the newsletter month after month. Finally, thanks to Chet Chin and Tim Brace of San Francisco, for month after month helping fold the newsletter.
Also, to all those kind people who have invited me to link up on Facebook and other similar sites, I do appreciate it, but I have never accepted the invitation. Facebook seems to think I registered before, but since I have no memory of doing that, I don’t know my password. Facebook says it will e-mail me my password, but it never does. I think it has a wrong e-mail address for me. So if you have invited me into Facebook, and I didn’t respond, that is why.
On July 2, California SB 1322 passed the Assembly Appropriations Committee. It deletes some laws in the Education Code that discriminate against members of the Communist Party. If it is enacted into law, it may be then possible to delete similar laws in the Election Code. California is one of only six states that still has such laws in its election code. The others are Kansas, Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois and Pennsylvania. Such laws were all declared unconstitutional by a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court in 1974, and they also violate the Helsinki Accords.
The Nation has this essay about election law problems in the United States. It is written by editor Katrina vanden Heuvel. It was posted on July 1 and will be in the next print edition. It comes close to criticizing restrictive ballot access laws, but does not actually do so. Part of the article has a subheading, “End the Party Duopoly” but that part of the article only talks about proportional representation and Instant-Runoff Voting. Thanks to Rob Richie for the link.
